Gale
We send the kids to bed, refusing any questions about the Capitol and pretending Rue's name was never said at the table. The food planned for dinner goes cold, like the blood in my veins. I want to rip the letter to shreds, burn it, pretend it never existed, but it is now one of our most vital clues in finding Peeta.
Now I have two missions, and I'm not sure what one I care more about: Saving Peeta, and protecting Katniss. We escaped the Capitol years ago, and now it feels as though the Rebellion, the fighting, the death, the loss of friends, family, loved ones, was for nothing. I wonder how she will react; a person who was so broken, mended with the thin glue of decades, only to be smashed again.
But she is Katniss Everdeen. A wedding ring on her finger does not change who she is.
She surprises me by reaching out and taking the letter from my hands, more gently than she has ever handled anything before. She examines the seal, her eyes carefully blank, though her face is etched lightly with a trace of determination fused with anger. It is the last emotion a person would feel; but this is Katniss.
"We should trace it," she says, not looking up. She turns the letter over and over, tracing the red wax seal. "Fingerprints, origin, ink, paper, writer... we could find it all out. It would lead us to them."
"Precisely," says Meld from behind me, cautious yet straight-backed and determined to serve us. My heart warms at Katniss's reaction; it is as she always was. With her working to help us, she's right - it may not be as easy as she says, but we could find the person who delivered this threat. She wants justice. But, I realize with a heart thud, not for herself.
"At leat we know who has him now," she looks up, eyes cold. "He could still be alive. I'm sure of it." As she looks back down at the letter again, she freezes, scanning the writing for the first time properly.
"Katniss, I don't want to say it, but if the Capitol have him and are coming after you, with no mention of him on the letter, there is a good change that he's..."
"Don't," she stops me. She is still frozen, touching the inky calligraphy again. "He's not dead. Peeta's not dead."
Meld and I exchange looks. "Miss, your hope is enlightening, but..."
She snaps her head up. "Peeta isn't dead. This is his handwriting."
YOU ARE READING
The Hunger Games: Book Four - How it Might Have Been ... Gale.
FanfictionThe end of the Hunger Games - abrupt, unsatisfying, mysterious? Gale Hawthorne was forgotten after the Rebellion ceased - now he is back to tell his tale. Living alone in District 2, Gale still feels as though something is missing in his life - her...
